Re: High bit character set question

[David.Empson@bbs.actrix.gen.nz]

In article <BxItBK.49I@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca> jroberts@centaur.UWaterloo.ca (J. P. Robertson) writes:
> 
> I'm wondering how I can access the nifty characters in the Symbol
> font in AWGS 1.0, Teach, or anything else for that matter.

I believe most of the characters in the Symbol font are just the
normal low-ASCII characters.  (e.g. 'A' generates one of the symbols).
Others will appear as high-ASCII, which you can access using the
option key (as mentioned in an earlier reply to your posting).

> I tried loading in a text file with low and high bit
> alphabets.  (I wrote an AppleSoft program to create this file by 
> writing asc codes to a TXT file.)  It didn't work; both
> sets appear to be low bit.

Applesoft can only print characters with the high bit set.  If you use
CHR$(x), Applesoft's internal PRINT code always sets the top bit
before passing the character to the I/O routines.  This forces the
character to appear in NORMAL text unless you've used the
INVERSE/FLASH commands.

When you're writing to a text file, BASIC.SYSTEM forces the high bit
off again, to comply with the standard for ProDOS text files (no
character should have the high order bit set; this has now been
extended for IIgs text files).

You can generate a text file containing all ASCII codes with the
following code:

5 LOMEM:16384
10 D$=CHR$(4)
20 FOR I=0 TO 255:POKE 8192+I,I:NEXT
30 PRINT D$;"CREATE TEXTFILE,TTXT"
40 PRINT D$;"BSAVE TEXTFILE,TTXT,A$2000,L256"

This probably isn't such a good idea - most of the control characters
will do strange things.  However, _some_ of them do contain valid
characters (Ctrl-R, S, T and U are usually check marks and Apple symbols).

Starting at character 32 (space) would be safest.
-- 
David Empson

Internet: David.Empson@bbs.actrix.gen.nz    EMPSON_D@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand